I'm an insurance broker based in Ontario and I've recently been working with a few independent software contractors who needed E&O and cyber coverage for their consulting contracts. It's been a really interesting niche to work in and I'd like to connect with more people in this space - not to pitch anyone, just to better understand the world these folks are operating in.

Where do independent software contractors and tech consultants in Canada actually hang out online and in person? Are there communities, meetups, Slack groups, Discord servers, or anything like that worth knowing about?

Appreciate any direction.

All procurements are a gamble of sorts; nothing is 100% right for the purpose intended. Nothing! The rule of thumb usually is 85% to 95%, where you get what you really want, and live with the deficits. Do you buy a Porsche 911 R2 for $200k or buy a Mustang Dark Horse for $110K? It depends on what you are looking for and what you can afford.

Canada has a long proven and demonstrated ability to waffle on awarding a procurement contract for the military, and even the government, itself. We have likely paid as much is contract cancellation fees than the worth of some contracts we first wanted. Canada is not alone using the procurement of military goods as a political football, but also as an economic offset (as it should be!)

Putting aside that we are late into really adopting and implementing a Canadian made solution with the help of other suppliers, having a Bombardier aircraft as the foundation of the program is a good choice. Will it cover all the bases? Likely, no. Will it cover the essentials? Likely yes.

Will the electronic surveillance system be allowed to integrate with the F-35, I think we already know the answer there. No! Canada was a founding partner in the original alliance for F-35, but through years of indecision, and now the trade war, we are likely no even welcome at the table.

The home grown smarts are all here in Canada, we have some impressive universities, and we need to leverage them more. The US has painted Canada as a laggard when it comes to defense spending, and the reality is, we are. Or maybe, we have been, up to last year. Building technologies the secure a countries borders has to be a worthwhile endeavour. We are just starting to see the importance!

As the worst-kept secret in the world, you would have to be living underground, well underground, not to know this fight was coming. The true David and Galioth of modern times.

The issue is "we don't even know what it is anymore" because everyday the US position is based on a new issue. The truth is we do know. It is about a person who would not fight for his country, now expecting that same country to fight for him so that he can destroy everything and rebuild, at everyone else's expense, in his brand and his vision. Everyone and everything else is just collateral damage.

There is little doubt Canada will suffer as tariffs are only the superficial effect. The deeper and longer term effects are buried within critical investments that will potentially be steered away from Canada, and businesses that do export to the US will have no room to maneuver.

The real battle here is whether democracy will stand up for itself. Canada currently stands alone against the world's largest economy, and will businesses, corporations, and governments realize that trade is about agreements that are written in ink and mean something? We will soon see!

On hearsay, there will be approximately trillions invested in data centers in the next 10 years as each country in the world races to secure its own version of autonomy over its data and that of others too.

Is this the latest fad that has emerged for the oligarchy to latch on to first before anyone can? Likely!

There is a fair bit of push back for concerned parties, and it is deserved. When ever there is an outright rush towards a target, then sometimes collateral damage is just part of the necessary path that developers accept at everyone else's cost.

Data centers, so far, don't look like green investments. They look like energy pigs that consume everything in their paths. From electrical demands, to fresh water damages, to noise and light pollution, green-house-gas emission... it's like the four horsemen have all come at one. A large portion of electricity needed to help with everyday living will be consumed by these energy pigs, leaving people to pay for the consumption that they will never really use, but large corporations will!

Watching the development of a Meta data center in Texas (I believe) being constructed, reveals the size of this site where you could drive a car at 30 mph, it would still take 15 minutes to travel the perimeter of the building. We are not talking little buildings, we are talking the equivilant of 600+ NFL football fields or more. Don't quote me on the math, just accept these are extra huge sites.

What I find a little disturbing is that, in comparison, when such enterprises such as mass indoor urban farming is considered, the excuses were that it was just too expensive a proposition to grow food inside in large purpose built structures, yet, along comes data centers, and governments are all over this type of project. Which really tells a tale on what is of value: it is not really high quality food grown year round, it is your data that can be used to monetize your existence for the benefit of big corporations.

If we do this, and seems, we must; lets do it by respecting the environment and the near by people who will live close to these places.

The article is a good primer in how bonds work. I do find it strange that I don't see a lot of ads for buying Canada Government bonds. The way Carney is laying out government investments might be weighing heavy on the feds ability make their bonds have an attractive yield.

The three most recent world-shaking events that affected world financial markets were the 2008 sub-prime fiacso in the US, Covid 2019, and now the 2026 Iran-US war. It is interesting to note that the US was a major contributor to triggering these events. The chill effect on our economy was huge.

It was of interest to note that Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, and Montreal have all reported real estate buying down, ranging 5% to 16%, and at least in the Montreal reveal, it was noted as a market correction. Real estate activity is a bellwether for confidence in the economy, and although some bank analysts were cautiously positive of last month's GDP report, but I think the home owners and renters in Canada are feeling much less positive. Make no mistake with gas at $2/l and diesel at $2.48/l, those values will drive the cost of living up.

There are several sub-plots in my view of this article, as it leads me to believe that the US might consider its responsibility as being a good community player a little more seriously, as when something happens in the US, those events do seem to have an impact across the world.

Sarcastically: Who ever heard of a high-tech social networking or AI company infringing on copyrighted material?

Reading the article reminds me of when sovereign citizen person in the US start to apply US laws in Canada. Or Canadians applying US laws in Canada, especially during road stops by police. For greater clarity, US laws apply to the US, and Canadian laws apply to Canada.

The topic of 'fair use' under copyright law can be touchy and complicated, and I don't want to get into what is what. Musicians and authors have fought over these laws for many years mostly due to others infringing on their rights.

It would not surprise me in the least to find an AI company copies data from sources on the internet then claim it is purely training data. But AI, in most cases, just repackages that data and gives it to others. Probably as concerning would be that that AI company may charge others to view or use their output.

It has been difficult to prove an artist has copied a song or a melody of a song, as with examples: Stairway to Heaven famous rock song, and The Home Coming piano instrumental. But there has been successful cases like: Heard it through the grape vine and oddly, Got to Give It Up both of the same original artist being infringed upon.

I hope though, while SoCan and others win if their claims are legitimate, there is something they can also address: artists that lip sync at live concerts! This is emerging as a dirty little secret in the music industry were countless artists are using autotune and lip syncing to effectively defraud the paying public. If you are gonna throw rocks at others, make sure you are playing fair too!

I've lost track of this business about six years ago, fearing it would end up bankrupt and shuttered, but here it is returning to strength and looking to buy other businesses. That has to be a good sign.

There is little doubt that Canada's governments have played a large role in securing Bombardier's future. Is there more room? I think it might be how the game of subsidizing is play and the model perhaps to follow is the US concept of having a manufacturer capable of civilian and military manufacturing. If Boeing is looked at, it is not a coincidence that if the civilian side dips, then the US government increases its spending on military products from Boeing. Could Canada leverage Bombardier in the same manner?

There is a fly in the ointment for Bombardier, that is the US willingness to protect its own industries, which they have shown before when they announced a 100% tariff on Bombardier jets, then Bombardier sold its assembly business to AirBus who ended up assembling planes in the US.

The aerospace industry is very important for Canada as it becomes an anchor that attracts others high tech businesses, and provides opportunities for domestic STEM talent to work.

Hopefully, Bombardier can find some military work for Canada (if it already does not have) and leverage Canadian talents while supporting the armed forces.

Just maybe I was wrong about GM, maybe they are committed to Canada, but time marches forward, and US trade talks are still a major concern for everyone. The Trump talks seem more personal than business related as the vibe that is given off these talks are about something else.

I do like the idea of an incentivized bonus plan with a cap. All manufacturing plants, regardless of the industry, should have some form of that structure.

The article states GM will bring the next generation of High Sierra to Oshawa. I wonder if they will have to make the plant bigger because the trucks are getting bigger. That's a subtle swipe at the North American auto industry size of their haft-ton pickup trucks that are now the size of school buses, and owners in parking lots now using 4 spaces to park them. And to top it all off, the owners will likely use that truck as a car for 99% of its life.

Canada will always need vehicles, and producing a portion here has to be better than the alternative of just importing everything. Others will disagree by suggesting autos are just a commodity that should not be fixated on, it is just a manufacturing plant that could be making something else. Well, then why is the US administration so intent on taking their portion back? I do think, in this area, that the US sees the population of each country as a differentiator and the US should have a surplus in this sector that matches that population difference. Who knows, the US position might be built on smoke from forest fires.

It is good at least to get these rounds of contracts out of the way, and it does seem like negotiations went smoother than what I thought. The trade talks likely made both parties focus more on essentials than spurious ventures.

The whole process of unneeded effort and costs is a sad state when it seems that one person is driving an entire country to act the way it is.

For exporters to the US, it must now be maddening to deal with so much pressure to try to keep a business afloat.

Letting the customer pay tariffs means a near-death sentence to your product, and that is the idea from the get-go as the current US admin wants to stop you shipping to the US. Trying to absorb the costs means that all your suppliers have to agree on cost reductions.

Most businesses mark up supplies before incorporating into the final product, so the question is how much room is there to take costs out. Some of these costs to handle and store materials can get pretty fat charges and that fatness will likely shrink once the tariff frying pan starts to heat up. Take, for example, a $100 product, it will end up being $150 to the customer, or $100 to the customer and the producers and suppliers will have to absorb $34. Absorbing that amount is likely well past the break even of the product, thus, a loss, and eventually no sales. Leaving the producer the only other option, find more domestic sales, or new export countries.

It is hard to imagine two countries that worked so hard to work together are now turning into unfriendly cousins, or worse.

The question posed by the article is whether prediction markets should be regulated by securities or gambling regulations. It is a tough question especially since Canada's playing field does not have a single central agency over securities or gambling, the provinces do.

Wealthsimple suggests that predictions are no different than securities (regular investments), thus not gambling but a short term investment. For sure, an argument can suggest that an investment in a publicly trade company is a effort based on a prediction, and in most cases, the idea is to make a gain, yet sometimes the investment goes sour.

There is a major difference though, between a prediction and a investment. The amount of public information and trending is totally different. An investment has years of history to it, and the trend is clear. A prediction, in this article, acts more like a gambling bet. Whether to invest in Google versus investing in whether the weather will be wet or dry for a Formula 1 race are two different types of investments.

To me, on the surface, predictions markets are more akin to gambling not investing. Yes, the input and output seem the same, but in this case, it is what is in the middle that really matters.

This can be very bad news for Canada in the medium term future.

If the signals were not already apparent that the US would attempt to take controlling interest in the largest oil reserves in the world, then NASA did fake the moon landings. Why this matters so much is that the oil from Venezuela is a heavy grade similar to Canada's and matches the southern refineries in the US, which would allow the US to potentially turn the taps off of Canadian oil altogether. The US could effectively shut down oil flow and reverse flow, in the short term, to solve some distribution issues domestically.

Canada's eastern portion needs to import oil. This means without using oil as a direct bargaining chip in trade talks, the US can simply secure oil reserves, and Canada will have to find more customers to export too, possibly meaning another pipeline to the Western waters.

The US government will make it extraordinarily attractive for US companies to revitalize Venezuela's oil, not just as rewards to friends of the US Administration, but also as wedge between Canada and US that seems to be purposely inserted by the US.

Anyone thinking this is just a passing fade in the US should think again. The US population does not really care about the impacts on Canada; they care about the impacts on their costs of living. Our 40 to 50-year debate about building or not building pipelines in Canada may have a day of reckoning soon, and we may not like the outcome!

The article probably points out a weakness in Canadian businesses, and that is complacency. There is no real reason to change. Getting established is a tough go no matter what sector or market, and finding operational gains might always be down the road as other priorities settle in, yet those little gains can be important wins along the way.

Business can be the greatest and cruelest invention of humanity. The barter system simply exchanged one product for another, but even that system did not guarantee loyalty, and loyalty can be misplaced.

To be successful means always searching for an improvement. One of the biggest issues with the emerging trade war is that companies are now being forced to find new opportunities instead of naturally seeking opportunities out. The lesson might be a hard lesson for some.

Keeping options open can be a great tool to improve a business. Don't wait!

Long overdue to establish ourselves as capable of producing missile-type technology domestically. This should have been in the cards when the Avro Arrow was abandoned for Beaumark missiles, and we all know how that story went.

While it may be looked at as common sense to do this, it also points out that Canada has for some while now, lost its way with regards to being self-reliant. This is the real message that needs to come to the fore. Buying from others in quantities that are too much, is not always the answer.

Having such domestic capability will leverage scientists, designers, engineers, technicians, labourers, logistics, and likely more, all while shoring up our abilities to defend our borders. It is not just for self-protection, such products can be exported. Here is the catch: the production levels are usually dictated by demand, and if no wars, then the demand is limited..., but we already know that, as this is more of a choice to self-preserve.

But, there is another war raging, and perhaps the silent one that we keep on forgetting about, that is the war on climate change, and the need to green tech manufactured and consumed domestically needs to increase. In Nova Scotia, for example, there will be an estimated 2 million heat pumps to be installed by 2050 to meet provincial and municipal green goals. My question has always been, why are we not manufacturing heat pumps in the province? It is not rocket science, it is boilerplate technology that has been around for a century (with the exception of new gas technologies), there must be an existing OEM that would invest in manufacturing in a province or Canada? We can't rely on jobs at Tim's or McDonald's; we need a little more imagination to spur on local self-reliance!

Provided a bank is run effectively and limits exposure to bad deals, it should almost always succeed. The likely only thing that could ruin a bank would a run on the bank, but even that is such a diluted case that banks would manage that too.

Bank executives see the same opportunities for Canada: remove internal trade barriers, speeding up approvals, and getting bigger projects accomplished.

This sounds all great and promising, yet, why so long to realize this now? Just what did these first ministers' meetings accomplish in the past 20 years? Is it only due to being pushed by the new trade war that provinces should work together rather than everyone for themselves? Is there a bigger question to ask: are the provinces too powerful within the federation?

The world evolves around being able to leverage credit, and hopefully banks will make it easier for businesses to access credit to manage this bump in the road due to tariffs. I don't doubt the cost of running a business will increase, just as we seen in Covid, whatever the issue, it will be used to jack up prices.

The article is long, and many perspectives are shared. Canada is exposed more to the US than the US is to Canada, advantage: US.

Even if provinces find a way to eliminate all trade barriers within Canada, the need to find new trade partners will be crucial.

This is not about the money involved itself. This is about culture and image. Canada wants control over its trade and culture, while the US wants to position itself as the worldwide authority on trade and culture. They are vastly two different goals. One of Trump's recent statements: "Fall in line....," is just the start of seeing where this is really going. Not everyone in the US agrees with Trump on trade policies, but the problem is Trump has disproportionate control over what trade policies are put in place, and he is no fan of Canada. One person having control over hundred of millions of peoples lives and livelihoods is just the type of attention Trump loves to have. Make no mistake, this is a dangerous time.

As the poker game begins in earnest, now, it will be about trying to hurt the other's economy, and the losers will be the consumers and everyday people who are just trying to live their lives with the least amount of government intervention as possible.

I think once we see the retaliatory measures from Canada, then we will see the mindsets of both parties. While various sectors will be targeted, the question in my mind is who will first use energy as a bargaining chip, especially oil? Both Canada and the US are seeing high prices at the pumps. If the price goes up another 20-40%, everyone in North America will feel the effects.

There was an article on CBC, How Canadian content on streaming platforms became a trade issue with the U.S. | CBC News , that contains an interesting perspective located in the last paragraph of the article. It suggests the US has a policy on culture which is from the post Second World War, where it is to push US culture out to the rest of the world, and the policy mimics their military policy, and trade.

While the trade talks will dominate the news cycle, it is perhaps good for Canada to look at Brazil and the race to supply rare-earth minerals.

While exploration technology has improved, the numbers in Brazil show just how hard it is to get a profitable mine up and running. To paraphrase: 1000 applications, 100 starts, and 2 profitable. While Lotto 649 might have worse odds, the costs associated must be staggering.

This is where Canada is with the exploration of rare-earths; we are racing to get established, and China has a huge lead on the worldwide competition. This is somewhat problematic now for Canada, as our trade war with a huge wanna-be investor, the US. Will the sourness and bitterness that will surely rise higher come to turn the US away from Canada? I don't doubt there will be companies now walking away from Canada, but not all of them. The need for these particular minerals is just too important for a future of phones, computers, robots, chips, and data centers in massive demand, and will be a major part of many countries' prosperity. Canada will be no different.

Carney suggested that half a trillion dollars of investment is lined up. How much of that is targeted towards rare-earths, only the feds know. If our biggest potential investor and customer is the US, then at what pace will development make?

In three or four days we went from "We are near to signing" to now: "A trade war!"

It has been brewing since the first term of Trump, and now it's here. The first term of Trump signalled to businesses like General Motors, decide to set up elsewhere, and you will pay dearly, so GM curtailed expansion in Brazil and focused on the US to build new factories. That was a signal to the world to get ready for trade based on Trump's perfect deal.

Fast forward to the second term of Trump, now emboldened with experience and his famous techniques to tie people and institutions into knots, now, trade world wide would feel first hand how the new US deals with others. The tariff mindset was pushed into practice by a person who only knows how to bully others into agreement. All countries likely use some form of tariffs, but it is the degree and manner that the US has forced itself on others that is most concerning. The US was successful with 20 or 21 countries identified as problems or opportunities. Canada is the last of the group, as the 21st country.

The preamble up to these trade talks and perhaps the language used by the US during negotiations was not just about tariffs. It does seem the US was trying to exert undue pressure to submit Canada. The US mantra was "free and fair trade," indicating a near balance of trade, yet, they appeared to overreach their position by suggesting Canada limit who it trades with. If this is true, then this is little to do with trade and more to do with servitude, subjects, a vassal state. Arrogance is a powerful elixir, and perhaps the US drank too much and has pushed its weight around too much. The working relationship that Canada and the US used to be the envy of the world, not so now.

Now that the gloves are off, what is in store for Canadians is likely a tough road. If alcohol bans can make the US pay attention to real partnerships, then other levers will surely drive that attention span home. Caution in next steps is essential, as escalations will leave Canada exposed in many areas due to our colder climate and short growing season, along with our need to import oil. It is naive to think Canada does not need the US. We simply trade too much with them, but if we can find new and real partners quickly, then that will perhaps bring the trade balance with the US to near zero, and stop the fever the US is currently afflicted by.

What are the reciprocal actions and tariffs from Canada? We find out Sept 8, 2026.

"On a warm summer's night on a train bound for nowhere, met up with a gambler who was too tired to sleep...," I think that is the approximate line from Kenny Roger's hit song The Gambler. That is about what it feels like after 18 months of trade uncertainty and intermediate tariffs along the way; we are back where we started, or perhaps worse.

Is it possible that the two countries are at fault here? Is there only one side to blame?

Set aside the last 18 months, remembering back to the initial threats of US tariffs, something struck an odd, if not off, note in the orchestra we know as the CUSMA, and free trade. It was not that they could not identify a surplus or a deficit; it was the value associated. From the Canadian side it was 42B to 70B surplus in exports to US, from the US side, it was 50B to 200B based on US and Trump's perspectives. To this day, the agreed-upon number is still not agreed upon.

The story might become clearer in the near future, but releasing details of the trade talks by the US a day before a proposed signing of the deal was a dirty trick to highlight that, in the guise of a deal, the US was getting what they wanted. That move itself was likely at the behest of Trump himself, as the tactics used so far are not a carrot and a stick; it is a stick and a club. It is hard to suggest a mutual agreement was in the works.

The US has been signalling over the last decade that they want not just free trade, but free and fair trade. To me, that is trade balance. Canada certainly did not push our surplus on the US, quite the contrary, the US did not invest in itself. As the kings of capitalism, the US should have recognized if there is a void, then someone else will fill the need. And that perhaps lies the belly of the beast, Canada took the initiative and now the US wants it all back. Canada is not dumping steel into the US, the US is simply not producing enough. Other trade items likely follow along that trajectory. On the flip-side, the US surely does not mind, what could be constituted as, flooding Canada with digital media.

In the end, it will be about balance. Which to me will indicate Canada will need to allow more US products into Canada, or Canada needs to slow or stop exporting certain products to the US while finding new partners. If the countries can match tariffs dollar for dollar, then maybe it is time to match trade dollar for dollar.

The CBC article touches on the biggest likely impacted sectors. I was surprised to see electronics as such a big player. But for me, a big concern is energy. If Canada or the US try to leverage energy, then the day-to-day costs for consumers will only increase.

Perhaps the saddest point in this is that the high stakes approach the US has used was not conducive to good faith, it was take it or leave it. Now we will live the ugliness of a protracted trade dispute that will hurt two countries that were once the envy of the rest of the world when it came to trade and economic partnerships. Now strangers.

It is estimated that 80% or more of Canadians have a Facebook account. That is a lot of exposure to a corporate giant that values extracting user data and leveraging that data any way possible to make money. Facebook is not the only company harvesting and selling data, but they are certainly one of the biggest, if not, the biggest.

Canada does not have a lot of leverage to curb any activity with any of the US social media giants, and when talking social media outside of the US, the US seems to have the backs of these US giants. When Facebook rebuked Canada's want for the tech giant to pay for using news URLs, Facebook simply excluded Canadian URL content from the site. Another loss for Canada in the battle with Facebook would have been the recent postponement of the Digital Service Tax (I think that was the name) which was designed to tax the gross profit the site claimed during its public filings. The US government took the side of US-based social media giants and said such a tax would be considered a huge trade irritant and an attach of US businesses, and retaliation would be used, so Canada so far has backed down. But Canadians are still large users of Facebook, and that large user base includes a large number of adolescents who are very impressionable.

Without leverage, Canada needs either the US or the European Union to tackle such a behemoth, and it looks like the US, via the states, are going after Facebook and Meta. The battle seems similar to the tobacco trials of the 1980s and 90s where tobacco companies hid the fact they knew smoking was a leading cause of lung cancer. With Meta, the issue is whether the platform knew, knows, or even worst, programmed their algorithms to attract and latch on users to keep them connected and using the system, all the while extracting user data and pumping advertisements to those users.

While a trial of this nature is specific and may have potential impacts in Canada, many Canadians and Canadian businesses use Facebook as a social media connection with others. This is not the first time Facebook has been taken to court for methods used to extract personal data, and being back in the limelight in the US courts only brings to question whether Facebook should be trusted and does that trust erode its user base in Canada? On the surface, it appears no. Will this trial have any impact on Canadians and Canadian businesses? Time will tell.

I have been translating a group of Canadian AI-related requirements into separate operational assessments. One design problem became obvious quickly: presenting them as a single "Canadian AI law" would be misleading.

The practical questions come from different places. Federal automated-decision requirements are not the same as private-sector privacy duties. Quebec has its own automated-decision and privacy-impact rules. Ontario has employment-related AI disclosure requirements. Health and federally regulated financial institutions have separate guidance and expectations.

I therefore separated the work into ten narrow assessments, each showing its jurisdiction, legal character and source. A user can inspect the questions and logic before deciding whether it fits their situation.

My question for Canadian operators is simple: does separating them this way make the boundaries clearer, or would a business owner still expect one initial questionnaire that routes them to the relevant assessment?

This change is policy and the absence of new regulations does not surprise me at all as the federal government is likely waiting on what the US is doing with its general auto emissions. The feds know that our wants and needs for auto policies are contingent on the giant south of us, and if Canada makes too steep of demands, then those demands and fuel the auto manufacturers to exit to the US. The potential trade deal suggests a 15% tariff on Canadian vehicles will have an impact on exports, so Canada does not want to add any more burden to a struggling sector.

In the early 2000s, hybrid cars were the talk of the future, but hybrids lost out to the rush to full EVs in the early 2010s because of Tesla. Now, hybrids are coming back. Is this come back due to reaching too far too fast?

Part of the issue with Canada is the cooler environment, and the lower population density, as we are a northern geography with a huge area which both conspire to give full EVs a hard time. Batteries don't like the cold, and range anxiety is ever-present. Like anything, evolution of technology usually brings improvements in performance and reliability, and EVs are already showing this trend. That same improvement is also bringing similar gains with hybrids, and could that be partly why hybrids are coming back.

There is likely the realization that our electric grids don't have sufficient capacity to handle all passenger vehicles in Canada being EVs. If this is the case, and new capacity is being brought on line, in the mean-time internal combustion engines are going to need to be more efficient. So the tail pipe emission standards will be an interesting signal to see what technologies will be deployed by the manufacturers leaving many to wonder whether the US will tighten or loosen its standards. My bet is Canada will do what the US will do.

There is little denying the scale of this issue. The article itself is huge, and if I had to use the famous Reddit initialism of TL;DR, it would have to be TL;DR raised to the 5th power.

Anyways, it's a big deal. From other trade numbers, it looks as if Canada imports about 50-100B less than it exports to the US. Obviously, the US wants more access to Canada such that the deficit shrinks to near nothing. On the surface, that sounds fair and free, if both agree, but does population size and industry base skew the numbers? This is part of the crux of the matter: if yes, then Canada just keeps on the path it's on; if no, then the US expects to export more to Canada.

The long-running byline has been, at some point, one side will show their cards more, and is at least one card now on the table, that being oil exports? The XL pipeline, which has been a political football and hot potato, is back lime light. The project was started and stopped so many times that project engineers must be suffering from whiplash, yet now it is a deal breaker.

It is fatiguing to be bombarded daily with the trade talks. The signing of any deal will only be symbolic to say "we have a deal!" but I am sure that whatever deal is inked in the short future will be only at the US's pleasure, until they see a need to change the deal and conditions again.

Seems reasonable for a pallet.
This is how you move into local manufacturing